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Updated: May 22, 2025
She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes. "I knew he needed me. I have to save him, Dick. You see that? I have to bring him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk. McGurk! Somehow the sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me." "You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave everything that comes for the sake of Pierre?
He sat in a chair directly behind that of Hurley, and Pierre's new-found acquaintance explained: "He's the bodyguard for Hurley. Maybe there's some who could down Hurley in a straight gunfight; maybe there's one or two like McGurk that could down Diaz damn his yellow hide but there ain't no one can buck the two of 'em. It ain't in reason. So they play the game together.
"Hello, there, Doc!" "How do you do, Mr. Klinker?" "Been up chinning your sporting editor, Ragsy Hurd. Trying to arrange a mill at the Mercury between Smithy of the Y.M.C.A. and Hank McGurk, the White Plains Cyclone." "A mill ?" "Scrap boxin' match, y' know. Done up your writings for the day?" "My newspaper writings yes." In the brilliant close quarters of the lift, Klinker was looking at Mr.
"From the front, Jack. No, he's fought square with each one. The wounds of Black Gandil were all in front, and when McGurk and I meet it's going to be face to face." Her tone changed, softened: "But what of me, Pierre?" "You have to leave this life. Go down to the city, Jack. Live like a woman; marry some lucky fellow; be happy." "Can you leave me so easily?"
And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your side, as you've made the hands of other men before me freeze. D'you understand?" The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached Pierre, and the devil in him smiled. "In six weeks, McGurk, you'll be finished. Now get out!" And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre. The latter cried: "Wait.
He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver, who doesn't know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf. That's McGurk. He's never had a companion; he's never trusted any man.
"I've lived too long with the name of McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth, but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em.
They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon. In the mean time the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk. Not all that grim significance passed on to "Red" Pierre, indeed, because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of McGurk.
The other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot. 'Not as fast as McGurk, it was said, 'but he shoots just as straight. Finally I asked someone about McGurk. The only answer I received was: 'I hope you never find out what he is. Tell me, what is McGurk?" Wilbur considered the question gravely. He said at last: "McGurk is hell!"
The charm of McGurk was broken. "For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him. Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in order Pierre or myself. And when those two meet there will be the greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert."
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